1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to printed circuit boards, and more particularly to a method for cooling electronic components attached to a printed circuit board.
2. Disclosure Information
In the design and construction of printed circuit boards (PCBs), a common concern is thermal management of the electronic components--that is, removing excess heat from the components. This is commonly a concern with resistors, transistors, integrated circuits, and other components which are power devices.
The typical approach to cooling such components 50 is to attach a finned copper or aluminum heat sink 70 thereto using a thermally conductive adhesive 80, either directly or through thermal vias 30 having thermally conductive material 32 therein, as illustrated in FIG. 1. If the heat sink is attached to more than one component 50 (as is commonly done), then the adhesive 80 used must usually be electrically insulative, so that the thermally adjoined components 50 do not electrically short one another through the heat sink 70.
However, such adhesives 80 are often the dominant thermal resistance in the thermal path between the components 50 and the ultimate heat well (e.g., the atmosphere). Thus, although these adhesives are useful for electrically isolating yet thermally connecting more than one component, they nonetheless add a relatively high thermal resistance to the component's thermal exit path. It would be desirable, therefore, to provide a way of thermally connecting yet electrically isolating two or more electronic components without the aforementioned drawback.